Warwickshire school to reopen after cyberattack crippled IT

A Warwickshire secondary school says it will fully reopen this week after a cyberattack forced a prolonged closure – though staff will return to classrooms with "very limited access" to IT systems.

Higham Lane School in Nuneaton confirmed in a January 16 update that all pupils from Year 7 through Year 13 will return to full-time in-person teaching from January 19, following a staggered, year-by-year return that began earlier this month.

Normal timetables will resume, but lessons are expected to look markedly different as teachers remain cut off from many electronic resources.

The school was struck by what it has repeatedly described as a "serious cyberattack" shortly after the Christmas break, an incident that wiped out access to core IT systems and forced Higham Lane to close entirely on safety grounds. The outage went far beyond email and classroom software, leaving the school unable to operate basic physical safety systems.

In ...